In my last post, I referred to this piece by kindergarten teacher Christina Shunnarah, who works with students from all over the world. She describes culture as an iceberg, with a small part visible, and the vast majority hidden under the surface. Image Source This is one of my favorite excerpts from her excellent essay: […]
On Thanksgiving Thursday, we ordered a full turkey dinner for our whole team. In Chinese, the word for turkey is 火鸡 (huo ji) which literally translates to “fire chicken.” All day my colleagues asked “Fire chicken 来了吗?” in anticipatory glee. With mashed potatoes, gravy, salad, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie and more, it looked and tasted […]
I just stumbled upon this email, which I sent home on November 17, 2006. I think it still stands true. Enjoy! Yeah, you read that right. I just watched Forrest Gump (a one-dollar bootleg DVD, of course) and now I understand why it was so popular here. One of my teaching colleagues even chose “Forrest” […]
I like this post by Jina Moore, a journalist based in Africa, about how she sounds different when she speaks different languages. It’s almost like that now in Kinyarwanda, where my vocabulary is more limited and so the words I know pop out, like the accented notes in a Hindemith counterpoint, and I can use […]
I just had a fascinating conversation with one of my students, an attorney at a leading intellectual property law firm. We read “Fright Bulb: How to Crush Your Last Shard of Creativity,” the editor’s letter from the December 2009 issue of Psychology Today. [The article doesn’t appear to be online. I teach him and his […]